Conventional bubble packaging material such as that sold under the trademark Bubble Wrap® by Sealed Air Corporation has been widely used for packaging articles for shipping and/or storage. Similarly, inflatable dunnage bags have been used to fill void regions in containers carrying articles for shipment and/or storage. The objective of the packaging material is to cushion the product during storage and transportation to protect it from damage. The packaging material is intended to cushion and reduce or eliminate excessive movement of the article in the container even upon an impact to the container, thus providing impact protection to the article during shipment and storage.
Other forms of protective packaging for articles of different sizes and shapes include waste paper, embossed paper, molded foams, and plastic beads, often referred to as “peanuts”.
Typically, the article to be protected is placed in a container and the protective packaging material is then placed about the article in an effort to fill the voids that form between the article and the container walls. This process, however, can be inefficient and inadequate, in that the optimum amount of protective packaging material is difficult to determine, usually resulting in the use of an insufficient or excess amount of packing material. The use of excess material is unnecessarily expensive, and can present a disposal problem once the container reaches its final destination and the article intended to be protected is removed from the container. The use of insufficient amounts of packaging material can result in ineffective cushioning of the article. In either case, there is no guarantee that the packaging material will conform as desired to the shape of the article and that the article will not become displaced during transportation of the container, thereby compromising the cushioning ability of the packaging material. It therefore would be desirable to provide a protective cushioned packaging system and fabricated assembly that ensures that the optimum amount of cushioning material is used for packaging a given article, and ensures that the material is strategically placed in predetermined locations to create selected point contact with the article, to block and brace the article, to inhibit or prevent movement of the article, and/or to provide improved impact protection during shipment and storage.
It is also advantageous to produce the system at the point of use so that no inventory space or transportation costs are involved.
It further would be desirable to provide an efficient, reproducible method of forming such a packaging assembly.